DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS The dynamics of employee relationships in an ethnically diverse workforce By

Emmanuel Ogbonna and Lloyd C. Harris

CASE ANALYSIS
The working environment is changing day by day and after the globalization the workforce got diversified with people of different countries and ethnicity. The issue of managing a diverse workforce is increasingly gaining recognition as an important topic of research and theory. However most of the studies on diversity is based on gender and discrimination against it however most of the other factors have been widely ignored before. Also most of the labour force and discrimination studies have been conducted in 1960s and 1970s when intolerance was displayed more visibly. However with the changing times the labour force has changed a lot and the new workforce comes up with new difficulties and issues. Similarly, the absence of recent empirical evaluations suggests that many studies of discrimination fail to account for developments in contemporary organizations which have been transformed by demographic, geographic and socio-cultural evolutions. In todays organization the diversity has increased to a great level due to cross cultural labour flow. There are many conflicting views about diversity and efficiency of an organization. Some says that diversity tend to decrease the efficiency. Studies have suggested that the membership of a group (for example, an ethnic group) offers an individual a source of social identity, while the group becomes a collective representation of this identity. It has been argued that members of diverse groups (particularly minority groups or out groups) frequently provoke distrust and competition (from the dominant groups or in groups) and that such groups tend to show less affiliation and commitment to each other, all of which may have negative consequences for performance. Furthermore several studies suggested that linguistic gap is one major cause of division and discrimination as people tend to talk to others who are from the same linguistic background and doesnt interact properly with other with different linguistic capability. Also at times it has been observed that higher authorities tend block promotion and appraisal as they think that the groups with the linguistic barriers are likely to encounter social difficulties (including social and cultural differences as well as linguistic and paralinguistic problems) which may hamper organizational efficiency. Again many people came up with views suggesting that diversity helps in increasing the overall efficiency with the collective talent pool comprising of people of different ethnicity. The research paper tries to come up with some valid analysis in order to find out as to what exactly leads to discrimination and division based on diversity. A study was conducted on a British bakery firm where people of different ethnicity were employed. Results

The observers found out that religion is one of the major issues when it comes to forming groups. Often people wanted rooms and other necessities in order to practice their religion while on work and this led to various conflicts due to non-availability of such items. Also recent social and religious conflict across the world impacted a lot on their working. The efficiency and productivity tend to decrease after any such event as people tend to think more about those conflicts and securities rather than concentrate on the work. Even discussion about those events led to various conflicts among the worker. The open ended interviews and observation shows that variety of language was a major issue. Shop floor workers tended to develop social affiliation and friendships that were based on language similarity, with the two most prominent languages being Arabic and Urdu. Such was the degree of comfort that people found in these social groupings that they frequently asked to be put in the same shift with members of their friendship group and often stayed together during breaks. Also people tend to avoid a distance with workers who used to speak some other language. Also at the organizational level language created a barrier to the promotion and many people were not promoted as the manager thought that they wont be able to cope up with the work load due to language barrier even when the specific job did not required any kind of verbal communication. The findings of this study also suggest a need to re-evaluate conceptualizations of discrimination in the workplace. Whereas previous studies have tended to conceptualize discrimination largely in relation to whites and ethnic minority groups however there are many other problems which lead to discrimination in the modern multi ethnical firms.